Redemption Stories The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Air Miles Summary

For our second edition of Redemption Stories: The Good The Bad and The Ugly I asked for our readers to tell us their stories of redeeming Air Miles Reward Miles. Well much to my surprise the responses were very minimal compared to the first edition on Aeroplan. This could mean one of two things, either most people are happy with Air Miles (usually we only hear complaints and not praise) or it is indicative of the type of visitors Rewards Canada receives, that is, we get more frequent travellers who utilize frequent flyer programs like Aeroplan than we do frequent shoppers who utilize programs like Air Miles.

RELATED STORY:  Redemption Stories The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Aeroplan Summary

Three quarters of the whopping four responses were good stories while one from Twitter was just plain ugly! There were no bad responses.

I would love to hear more comments and stories from Air Milesmembers, feel free to do so at the bottom of this post and finally I want to thank everyone who contributed their stories, without you this post would not be possible! Be sure to watch for the next Redemption Stories request later this month.



THE GOOD
via the Rewards Canada Blog

I have had two good experiences for redeeming Air Miles Rewards Miles for flights. The first was for a last minute flight to attend a funeral. As usual flights were quite expensive to buy only 2 days out but I logged onto Air Miles and was able to find flights to redeem miles for, the rate was slightly higher than the base redemption level but not exorbitant. This redemption saved me a good deal of money. The second redemption I had to call in as I was short about 300 miles for 4 tickets and you can only buy Air Miles to top off for a redemption via the phone. I didn’t have to wait too long for an agent and she was great, the additional Air Miles Reward miles purchase went without a hitch as did the actually flight booking. My only concern was that since I could not book online I would incur a higher booking fee and the agent said that she would refund the difference as she understood that the only reason I called in the booking was because I needed to top of my account otherwise I would have booked online (hey Air Miles maybe you should look into the option to allow people to buy miles online during the booking process!)

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via email

We have booked 5 return flights to Edmonton from Victoria or vice versus for our family in the last 60 days.

On line system works fine although we have to keep putting the same personal data in repeatedly.

I tried to book a couple of these flight with Aeroplan and they did not have anything available. This seems weird to me as I then went to Air Miles and I got two return flights via Air Canada for the exact same dates.

Observation: It would appear that Aeroplan is not buying enough seats for their members. Or perhaps there are more Aeroplan members flying to Edmonton than for AirMiles members

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via email

I just used Airmiles to book a trip for the time period I had been trying to book for months (with Aeroplan). I had the pick of any flights I wanted. The opposite experience to Aeroplan. My only problem now is the glut of Aeroplan points I have. The ratios for gift cards, etc. are not nearly as good for classic flights. What a bummer.

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THE BAD

There were no bad responses!

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THE UGLY

via Twitter

Actually, I've NEVER redeemed..because I hear the process is dreadful.

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1,500 Bonus Aeroplan Miles for Best Western Travel Card Purchases

Here is an offer that we see come along a few times a year and it is back for the month of June. At first this offer may not look like anything special but by taking advantage of it you can actually complete a rare to come by 'triple dip'. You've heard me on the Rewards Canada website and on TV, radio and in print talking about double dipping (using a mileage earning credit card and swiping your loyalty program card the same time) all the time but almost never mention triple dipping anymore as it generally unheard of anymore.

How is this a triple dip?
Dip #1: Purchase the Best Western Travel Rewards card with an Aeroplan earning (or any other reward credit card since a triple dip does not have to be in one program)
Dip #2: Earn the 1,500 Bonus Aeroplan Miles for purchasing the Travel Card
Dip #3: Book and Stay on a mileage or point qualifying rate at any Best Western to earn miles/points for that stay.

Here is the offer as pulled from my Aeroplan Bonus Miles page

Earn 1,500 Bonus Aeroplan Miles for every $100 Best Western Travel Card purchased. Full details Until Jun 30, 12

Related Post: Additional Free Night Voucher with the Best Western MasterCard
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Great Business Class Deals from Canada to Europe and Asia

Three SkyTeam airlines recently launched sales for Business Class tickets from Canada to Europe. My parents actually got on a previous KLM offer like one of these, Calgary-Prague for $2,500 all in. This time the prices are slightly higher but that is because we are also closer to the summer travel season. All of the prices below include all taxes and fees.

Air France Offers (all must be booked by June 5 for travel June 19 - Sept 10)
ROME starting from $ 2499 R/T Book now
VENICE starting from $ 2499 R/T Book now
BELGRADE starting from $ 2499 R/T Book now
BARCELONA starting from $ 2499 R/T Book now
ZAGREB starting from $ 2499 R/T Book now
DELHI starting from $ 3299 R/T Book now
BEIRUT starting from $ 2999 R/T Book now
MUMBAI starting from $ 3359 R/T Book now .

KLM Offers (all must be booked by June 5 for travel June 19 - Sept 10)
Montreal-Barcelona $ 2 499 Book now
Montreal-Cairo $ 3 299 Book now
Toronto-Amsterdam $ 2 499 Book now
Toronto-Delhi $ 3 299 Book now
Vancouver-Amsterdam $ 2 999 Book now
Vanvoucer-Tel Aviv $ 3 499 Book now
Calgary-Geneva $ 2 999 Book now
Calgary-Munich $ 2 999 Book now

Alitalia Offers (all must be booked by June 5 for travel June 19 - Sept 10)

TORONTO - ROME	Starting from $ 2,499 Book Now
TORONTO - NAPLES	Starting from $ 2,499 Book Now
TORONTO - VENICE	Starting from $ 2,499 Book Now
TORONTO - PALERMO	Starting from $ 2,599 Book Now
TORONTO - CATANIA	Starting from $ 2,599 Book Now
TORONTO - CAGLIARI	Starting from $ 2,599 Book Now

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WestJet offers bonuses on new U.S. routes

Typically when an airline launches a new route their Frequent Flyer program will offer a bonus offer for those routes to stimulate demand and this is exactly the case with WestJet's new routes to Chicago and New York La Guardia. Check out these offers as pulled from our WestJet Bonus Dollars page

Triple WestJet dollars for flights between Toronto, Montreal or Ottawa and New York-LaGuardia. Full details Jun 4 - Sep 3, 12

Double WestJet dollars when flying between select Western Canadian cities and Chicago. Members will be sent an invitation to register for this promotion by email. Register by Jul 15 for flights Jun 3 - Sep 3, 12

Options outside of Aeroplan and Air Miles. Part 2: Credit Card Programs

The majority of Canada's loyalty program market share is held by two programs, Aeroplan and Air Miles. While both programs have strong roots in travel they have grown into what the industry calls coalition loyalty programs, which in layman's terms means many earning partners and a varied rewards catalog. Its hard not to be a member of at least one of these two programs since you would miss out on some potential rewards because of their vast coverage within Canada. With that being said, I receive numerous emails from my readers on how they are fed up with Aeroplan or Air Miles or both and they want to know what other options they have, particularly for travel rewards. This piece will look at the other options Canadians have for travel reward loyalty programs and while you can take any of these routes as your primary program I would recommend keeping Aeroplan and/or Air Miles as a secondary program. One thing you will notice is that to make one of these other programs your primary one, it will require the use of a credit card to maximize your reward potential. For travel reward programs, credit card use is the easiest way to rack up points and miles outside of actual travel. I've broken out the choices into four parts and will focus on the pros and cons of making one of these choices as your primary program.

Part 1: Frequent Flyer Programs
Part 2: Credit Card Programs

Part 3: Hotel Programs



CREDIT CARD PROGRAMS

If you have followed Rewards Canada for at least sometime you’ll know that I like to split travel credit cards into 5 categories. Part 2 of my feature on your other options outside of Aeroplan and Air Miles focuses on three of those credit card categories: Travel Points (with annual fee), Travel Points (no fee) and Hybrid credit cards. The other two categories of credit cards, airline and hotel are covered in Part 1 and Part 3 respectively.

Flexibility, Flexibility, Flexibility, that is the key to Travel Point and Hybrid credit cards. Despite varying degrees of flexibility (see Infographic below) the premise behind these cards is to give you the flexibility to book any flight at anytime with any airline and not be bound by the sometimes very restricting rules of a Frequent Flyer Program.

Some of the credit cards go even further by allowing point redemptions for hotels, car rentals, vacation packages, train tickets and more. What essentially happens here is that you book travel either on your own and redeem points for that travel or redeem your points for a booking made via the credit card issuer’s travel agency. How you book depends on the credit card, cards like the Capital One Aspire MasterCards, TD Infinite & Platinum Visas, American Express Gold Rewards & Blue Sky Cards and the Diners Club Club Rewards MasterCard all allow you to book your travel yourself via any method (online, travel agency etc) with any travel provider and then redeem the points against the charge on your statement. While the remainder of the cards have you book via the card’s reward center or their dedicated travel agency. So as long as there is availability for the travel you want there shouldn’t be any issues in booking it. This is where these cards stand out over Frequent Flyer programs as FFPs tend to have a limited amount of seats at the lowest redemption levels and may not have the exact dates you want unless you redeem at the ‘higher’ any seat anytime redemption levels. With the travel point/hybrid cards you are technically ‘buying’ a revenue airline ticket, hotel stay etc so the beauty of these bookings is that in most cases you can earn frequent flyer miles on the flights and/or frequent guest points on the hotel stays whereas reward tickets from Frequent Flyer programs do not.

The majority of the travel points and hybrid cards offer a rate of return between 1 – 2.33% on your credit card spending which is very comparable to credit cards that earn frequent flyer miles when redeeming for economy class tickets. Where the travel points and hybrid cards lose value is in redeeming for First or Business Class tickets as the rate of return remains at the 1 - 2.33% while frequent flyer program credit cards can achieve rate of returns upwards of 10% or more. 



If your travel rewards goal is to travel in First or Business Class you will be better off with an airline (frequent flyer) credit card or hybrid card but if your travel rewards goal requires any of the following: flexibility, economy class flights, multiple airline options, hotels, car rentals and virtually any other travel then a travel points or hybrid credit card is more than like the better option for you.



Some of the more popular Travel Points and Hybrid credit cards in Canada are:
American Express Gold Rewards Card
BMO World Elite MasterCard
Capital One Aspire Travel™ World MasterCard®
CIBC Aventura World MasterCard

CIBC Aventura Visa Infinite
CUETS Platinum Class MasterCard

Desjardins Odyssey Gold
Diners Club Club Rewards MasterCard
RBC Visa Infinite Avion
RBC Visa Platinum Avion

TD First Class Visa
 Infinite
TD Platinum Travel Visa

There are nearly 40 more cards that fall into this category from other banks and credit unions in Canada.

Additional Free Night Voucher with the Best Western MasterCard

This offer is no longer available

50% Bonus Aeroplan Miles on Canada, US, & Mexico/Caribbean flights

For a limited time you can earn 50% Bonus Aeroplan Miles on all Air Canada flights within Canada, between Canada and the U.S. as well as to/from Mexico and the Caribbean if you book your flights online at AirCanada.com. The offer is valid for bookings until June 4 for travel until September 3.

Full details can be found here.

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Etihad Airways now serving Vancouver (well sort of... via a codeshare)

I thought I would bring this Etihad news to our readers since they were one of the big sponsors of our 10th Anniversary contest last year and some of you won Etihad Guest miles in that contest that perhaps you can use on this route if you have earned even more Guest miles!

Recently, Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways began a full code share agreement with Germany's airBerlin, you may have seen some of the bonus offers announced by us when the partnership launched and as some of you may or may not know, airBerlin serves Vancouver during the summer months. With the full partnership between airBerlin and Etihad that means you can earn and redeem Guest Rewards miles for this flight.

Flight No	FROM	TO	DEP	ARR	DAYS
EY 1013	Vancouver	Dusseldorf	12:30	07:10+1	Wed & Sun
EY 024	Dusseldorf	Abu Dhabi	11:50+1	20:20+1	Wed & Sun
EY 023	Abu Dhabi	Dusseldorf	02:00	07:00	Wed & Sun
EY 1016	Dusseldorf	Vancouver	09:45	10:45	Wed & Sun

Service started on May 13th, 2012 with flights every Sunday. Frequency increases to twice a week from June 13th, 2012 every Wednesday and Sunday up until October 21st, 2012.

For those of you down east, Etihad serves Toronto directly from Abu Dhabi as well.

For more details on the Vancouver connection please see here or to book flights visit Etihadairways.com

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Transfer points to Aeroplan to earn up to 40,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles

Aeroplan is going full tilt this spring with the bonus mileage promotions! From the Star Challenge to using multiple travel partners to buying a Maple Leaf Lounge membership, you pretty much name it and you can get bonus Aeroplan miles for it. The latest in their slew of offers is the return of their partner transfer bonus. Basically what it entails is transferring points out of other loyalty programs into your Aeroplan account. In the past the bonus was based on per transaction basis so the promotion wasn't as attractive as it is now since this time around it is cumulative across all participating partners. That is, you can transfer from partners like American Express, Starwood, Hertz and more and as long as the total Aeroplan miles deposited from all of them reaches one of the bonus target levels you will be awarded the respective bonus miles. What is even better is that if you complete some of these transfers before May 28 they should also count as 'stars' for the Aeroplan Star Challenge. The offer as pulled from our Aeroplan Bonus Mile Promotions page is as follows:

Earn up to 40,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles when you convert points from a wide selection of Aeroplan partner loyalty programs (hotel, car rental, credit card and points.com). Bonuses are as follows and are awarded on a cumulative basis (not per transaction like previous promotions)
Convert Points to
5,000 Aeroplan Miles to earn a 1,000 Mile bonus
10,000 Aeroplan Miles to earn a 2,000 Mile bonus
20,000 Aeroplan Miles to earn 4,000 Mile bonus
50,000 Aeroplan Miles to earn a 10,000 Mile bonus
100,000 Aeroplan Miles to earn a 25,000 Mile bonus
150,000 Aeroplan Miles to earn a 40,000 Mile bonus
Full details Valid until June 18, 12

Virgin Atlantic Business Class Vancouver-London for $1774 ALL IN!

Many airlines are starting to match British Airways' Jubilee Business Class sale in the U.S. and here in Canada Virgin Atlantic has gone even further by beating BA's Business Class price (see the post below this one for the BA offer) out of Vancouver

The Virgin Atlantic offer needs to be booked by May 18th like the BA offer and is good for travel from May 24th (the first day VS starts serving YVR) to June 10th. The total price for non-limousine Upper Class fares comes in as low as $1774 for round trip flights all taxes and fees included.

For complete details and/or online booking visit Virgin Atlantic